Evolutionary Epistemology and the Aim of Science

Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (2):209-225 (2010)
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Abstract

Both Popper and van Fraassen have used evolutionary analogies to defend their views on the aim of science, although these are diametrically opposed. By employing Price's equation in an illustrative capacity, this paper considers which view is better supported. It shows that even if our observations and experimental results are reliable, an evolutionary analogy fails to demonstrate why conjecture and refutation should result in: (1) the isolation of true theories; (2) successive generations of theories of increasing truth-likeness; (3) empirically adequate theories; or (4) successive generations of theories of increasing proximity to empirical adequacy. Furthermore, it illustrates that appeals to induction do not appear to help. It concludes that an evolutionary analogy is only sufficient to defend the notion that the aim of science is to isolate a particular class of false theories, namely those that are empirically inadequate.

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Darrell P. Rowbottom
Lingnan University

Citations of this work

What Scientific Progress Is Not: Against Bird’s Epistemic View.Darrell Patrick Rowbottom - 2010 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 24 (3):241-255.
Aimless science.Darrell Patrick Rowbottom - 2014 - Synthese 191 (6):1211-1221.
Shifting to structures in physics and biology: A prophylactic for promiscuous realism.Steven French - 2011 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42 (2):164-173.

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References found in this work

The logic of scientific discovery.Karl Raimund Popper - 1934 - New York: Routledge. Edited by Hutchinson Publishing Group.
Laws and symmetry.Bas C. Van Fraassen - 1989 - New York: Oxford University Press.
The scientific image.C. Van Fraassen Bas - 1980 - New York: Oxford University Press.
The aim and structure of physical theory.Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem - 1954 - Princeton,: Princeton University Press.
Objective knowledge.Karl Raimund Popper - 1972 - Oxford,: Clarendon Press.

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